Searching for silver linings  There wasn’t much new economic data this week, but we got our usual (un)friendly reminder about our dire employment situation. Seasonally adjusted new jobless claims increasedlast week. Silver lining – auto plants typically shut down for holidays in July but that’s not happening this year, so the seasonal adjustment meant to normalize for this is making the seasonally adjusted numbers complete garbage. Unadjusted new jobless claims actually fell 142k to 1.37m. I feel like we’ve gotten so desensitized to seeing these weekly job losses in millions that it’s worth the reminder that the highest weekly number we’ve seen before COVID-19 was 695k in 1982. Four months into this…

The heart of the economy  Small businesses are a critical part of the US economy and the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on these businesses is unfortunately well-known. The National Federation of Independent Business measures optimism among small businesses, which increased for the second straight month in June and came in at the highest level since February. The caveat to this information is that it doesn’t completely capture the increasing case counts that caused states to bring back restrictions toward the end of the month. On the flipside, states that were impacted most acutely at the beginning (NY, NJ, PA) have started slowly reopening. Moral of the story: Over 99%…

False positive New jobless claims came in slightly above 1.3m for last week. Even though this is the lowest reading in four months, it’s still insanely high compared to the numbers pre-COVID. It’s also probably understating reality because the July 4th holiday weekend meant people had one less day to file claims. Continuing claims, which is a better barometer for unemployment, came in at 32.9m last week when including all the additional state and federal unemployment claims. That number is, unfortunately, 1.4m higher than the week before.  Moral of the story: Shutdown 2.0 across many states is flowing through into the unemployment picture as Texas, Florida, and Georgia saw some of the highest…

Taking a break from our regularly scheduled activities to be mindful about what this holiday weekend represents. I came across a great tweet from Tim Cook reminding me “our work as a country is not finished until every American shares fully in the promise of the Declaration of Independence.” In case you need a quick refresher from your US History class (as I did), here’s the excerpt from the Declaration of Independence we all need to remember and strive to achieve every day –   We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that…